Salt Lake City Christmas Adventure Continues

Since the last post introducing Kahve Cafe, we have enjoyed our time with Elif and Mina and even managed to have an adventure that now looks funny. Keep reading …

Of course, we revisited Kahve Cafe and chatted with some customers as they too were enjoying Christmas with their families. They were surprised and pleased to meet Elif’s parents. Their surprise increased when I pointed at our wedding photograph, my childhood picture, and the like. That narrative probably enhances the authenticity of the Kahve Cafe.

Candlelight Concert

For the night before Christmas Eve, Elif had purchased concert tickets after a nice dinner at P F Cheng. After dinner, Elif drove us around but the traditional Christmas lights around Temple Square were missing. They were in the process of making the temple earthquake-proof and the lights were sparse.

Click on the images to see them larger, uncropped, and read their titles.

The Candlelight Concert was at the Clubhouse, and the place was glowing with candles from outside to the stage, even under some seats. The candles were electronic replicas of large candles of various heights for safety. I photographed the candles and asked one of the ushers to take a picture of our small family.

The concert was enjoyable. A women’s string quartet opened with pieces from Nutcracker, ending with Hendel’s Messiah with a bunch of Christmas carols interspersed. Picture-taking was allowed only at the closing piece, and they announced when we could do that. Although I took pictures to show the quartet under the dim light, I went for intentional camera movement to present the music in the form of lights. Can you see the music?

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve day, we visited the Cafe and I took a few more photographs. The memory lane was quite evident with a picture of me and Binnaz at the top and continuing to show Jan’s mother Ruthie and my mother Nevber looking from the small window as Jan was delivering Elif and many more. On the other wall was one of my photographs of Sirince. All those together took us back decades and made us reminisce.

And The Adventure Begins

We came home later and the girls started to set up the table for dinner. When everything was ready, Elif called us for dinner. And, the next thing I remember was Mina screaming that there was a squirrel in the house. The critter climbed on her leg ran across the table, jumped down, and went under the couch in the living room.

Elif put the dog in Mina’s room and shut the door to keep Josephine away from the intruder. We looked around to see if we could locate it to no avail. Then Elif called many pest control companies but they were all closed for Christmas Eve. Based on some suggestions she got from her online groups, we went to Target to find a squirrel trap, some nuts, and an air horn. Unfortunately, we returned home with only some nuts and the air horns to scare it to move.

How To Get A Squirrel Out

Elif set a trail of nuts from the couch to the back door which she left open. The hope was the rodent would follow the nuts to its way out and we sat down and watched a movie. Not a peep from the pest. We finished the movie and decided to go to bed. Mina went to her room and another scream; it was in her room now!

Elif went into the room and tried to convince the squirrel to go out the door to the backyard. Talks, pleas, threats, nothing doing! I suggested that she use the core tube of wrapping paper to nudge the animal which made it jump down from the curtain rod and noticing the open door, it fled! Phew! Here is a few seconds of video to show the intruder.

And The Christmas Day

On Christmas morning we got up and had a small breakfast, then Elif and Mina started passing gifts to everyone to open. That took a while, and after lunch, we decided to locate some murals in Salt Lake City. Elif had printed a list of them and the roads were empty. We stopped at quite a few and photographed them. I will present the full mural collection in a separate post.

This will be a Christmas to remember!